Hammer Lane Blog

The manufacturers and marketers of commercial-grade pickups and full-size vans have told me in recent days that 2011 will be a very good year for sales and— remarkably, to me anyway—that last year was even better.

“A lot of commercial pickup and van buyers are doing more than kicking tires,” Eric Guenther, Ford’s general marketing manager– North American Fleet, Lease & Remarketing Operations (NAFLRO) told me. “Last year was a good one as we saw total industry sales for full-size vans/buses increase 42% over 2009.



CNG-powered Ford Transit Connect

“Those are purely commercial fleet sales, as tracked by R.L. Polk, with fleets defined as having five or more vehicles in a local unit,” Guenther continued. “And Ford outpaced that slightly, being up 49% in van/bus sales.” As for commercial pickups, he says total industry sales were up 40% and Ford’s sales in that segment climbed 47%.

“This year sales won’t be as substantial as the big rebound in 2010, but the market is still moving in the right direction,” noted Guenther. He said Ford “does not get into specific estimates, but in general we expect continued growth in both segments for 2011 of 10 to 20%.”

He pointed out that what happened last year was the “volume customers began buying first and then, by the end of the year into this year’s first quarter, we saw stability for [orders from] big buyers and renewed purchasing by smaller fleets. Light-truck buyers are showing more confidence in the economy and finding it easier to get credit,” which together are driving up sales.

GM Fleet and Commercial’s Joyce Mattman, director of commercial product & specialty vehicles, and Brian Bowden, director of commercial dealer operations, told me much the same as Guenther.

“Overall growth for the total [commercial] industry will be 10 to 15%,” said Mattman. “We continue to see growth in the small-business buyer segment as the economy keeps recovering,” added Bowden, “with full-size pickup and van sales up 30% year to date.

“We’re seeing great acceptance of our GMC and Chevrolet HD pickups and the customers who historically buy vans are coming back,” he continued. “[Right now] we’re up 38% in pickup/van sales.”



GMC Sierra pickup

Bowden noted that GM is “not reporting a lot yet from residential construction buyers, but we are seeing van and pickup sales to firms engaged in home additions and remodeling.

“Another key vocation is agriculture,” he added. “Farmers and ranchers are out buying new heavy-duty pickups and chassis-cabs. Together, the construction and agriculture segments are accounting for 40% of sales volume this year.”

He pointed out that the third big segment for light-duty truck sales is “service repair” providers, such as plumbers, electricians, and appliance and HVAC techs.

Daimler Vans USA (DVU), marketer of the Daimler Sprinter van—now offered here either as a Mercedes-Benz or a Freightliner model– reports it sold 8,559 Sprinters in 2010– a 2.5% jump over ’09.

Ernst Lieb, president & CEO of DVU’s parent Mercedes-Benz USA, recently told the media that “we were able to not only sustain our sales performance, but achieve this increase” over the year before.” While not divulging a 2011 Sprinter sales forecast, DVU is “working off a forecast increase of 26% for the marketplace—to 240,000 units [in 2011].”

Peter Bedrosian, senior manager of product planning for Nissan North America, Inc. (NNA), which just launched the market-engineered Nissan NV full-size van, told me that based on R.L. Polk numbers and the OEM’s internal projections the “full-size pickup market will get back to two million in size in the next two years and full-size vans are headed back to their historical volume of 300,00 units in the next two to three years.”



Nissan NV roll-out earlier this year

Bedrosian added jocularly that “commercial customers can only put so much duct tape on their trucks. To be sure, there is pent-up demand out there for new light-duty trucks.”

For a look at what OEMs see as the key demands of light-duty commercial truck fleets and how they’re meeting those requirements, keep an eye out for my feature article on this topic in the May print issue of FleetOwner.



Sprinter: First “Eurovan” here– and still the largest in size

“It’s like deja-vu, all over again.”

–Yogi Berra, baseball sage

It’s not quite “all over again,” but the news out of Washington DC these days sure makes it feel a lot like we’ve returned to the good old days of 1983. And that would be a good thing. Specifically in terms of seeing the elected fiefdoms of the federal government work together when they should in bipartisan fashion– that is, above politics– to resolve key challenges to our nation’s economic well-being and security.

Once upon a time, bipartisanship reigned in our nation’s corridors of power. If you were born much later than 1970, though, you may have little or no recollection of seeing in action what one professor had drummed into my hung-over head during an early-morning political-science class back around 1979: “The three principles of American governance are compromise, compromise and compromise.”

Our late President Ronald Reagan and the late Speaker of the House Thomas Phillip “Tip” O’Neill, Jr. (D-MA) already have secured a place in American history for the bipartisan deal-making they engaged in to hammer out a Social Security solution in 1983 that so far has solidly stood the test of time. That even though American politicking has in too many ways since Reagan left office veered far away from the three principles noted above, which have served our nation so well since the Constitution was ratified in 1788.

Of course, they weren’t the first national leaders to make things happen via the fine art of compromise (not to mention in their case a surfeit of Irish wit that both brought ever smilingly to the negotiating table!).

In an opinion piece penned for US News & World Report back in 2009, Matthew Dallek pointed out that Reagan and O’Neill demonstrated in 1983 that “bipartisan action can happen in swift and surprising terms on the thorniest and most insoluble of issues… the bipartisan compromise on Social Security stands in hindsight as about as striking a breakthrough imaginable in the deeply polarized political atmosphere of Reagan’s first term.”

As Dallek put it, “Reagan’s opposition to the capstone of the New Deal produced bitter fruit in his first year in office” With a fiscal cloud over Social Security, the administration declared it wanted to cut benefits for people who had retired before the age of 65.

“Republicans and Democrats alike reacted to the White House plan with a combination of disdain and derision,” the columnist noted. “The Senate voted 96 to none against while a large bipartisan majority in the House opposed it as well.”

But Reagan rebounded, establishing a bipartisan commission to figure out how to extend the solvency of the Social Security trust fund. The commission came up with a compromise that Dallek said “cemented a new reigning political consensus on Social Security”—that it was politically untouchable going forward.

The 1983 Social Security Reform Act not only reversed Reagan’s own ideological opposition to Social Security, the columnist contended, “but also identified the nation’s leading conservative as a defender of liberalism’s most cherished achievement.”

According to Dallek, Reagan biographer Lou Cannon praised the bill as “a compromise that did some things the Democrats wanted and some things the Republicans wanted.”

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Ron and Tip: Two guys who knew how to get things done– and with laughter and never any spite.

Nearly three decades on, Reagan’s and O’Neill’s ability to work together as elected leaders– not as party hacks or rabble-rousers– across not only the political aisle, but the chasm between their own ideological positions for the good of the nation bodes well for positive developments when the new Congress is seated in January.

While Reagan had to deal with a large Democratic majority in the House, the results of theis Fall’s mid-term elections mean that to get anything meaningful done in the rest of his term, President Obama will have to work with a Republican majority in the House as well as a Senate controlled only thinly by a slight Democratic majority.

Will John Boehner and Barack Obama be able to bridge their divide as Reagan and O’Neill did?

The good news so far is the President has clearly read his fresh cup of tea leaves correctly.

He fiercely defended the tax-cut deal he forged with Congressional Republicans earlier this month “against intense criticism from his own party, insisting it was “a good deal for the American people,” according to The New York Times.

Were they still around to offer counsel to Obama, I suspect Ron and Tip would slap him on the back, smile broadly and perhaps remind him of what that other great Irish wit, Oscar Wilde. once said: “Anybody can make history. Only a great man can write it.”

All those who remain skeptical that global warming– brought on by greenhouse gas emissions– is causing climate change should give a read to the news story that came out yesterday reporting that a British panel has cleared scientists accused of ginning up their research in the so-called Climategate scandal.

According to New York Times reporter Justin Gillis, the investigating panel “exonerated the scientists caught up in the controversy known as Climategate of charges that they had manipulated their research to support preconceived ideas about global warming.”

On the other hand, the scientists were “rebuked” for “several aspects of their behavior, especially their reluctance to release computer files supporting their scientific work.”



Bottom line is it’s the only home planet we got.

The British report is the last in a series of five investigations of leading British and American climate researchers, which was brought on by by the release of a “cache of e-mail messages that cast doubt on their conduct and raised fresh public controversy over the science of global warming,” reported Gillis.

But when all is said and done, all the investigations have essentially cleared the climatologists of wrongdoing. Nevertheless, the scandal has hurt the cause of gaining acceptance for the idea that the global warming now being experienced is caused largely by burning carbon-based fuels.

“The e-mails don’t at all change the fundamental tenets of the science,” the artcile quoted Roger Pielke Jr., a professor of environmental studies at the University of Colorado, saying. “But they changed the notion that people could blindly trust one authoritative group, when it turns out they’re just like everybody else.”

This latest development may not clear the air entirely around climate change, but it should be reassuring to all of us that if the problem is man-made, then mankind can solve it…. eventually.

Friending. Tweeting. News Feed. Fan Page. There’s a whole new lexicon to learn when you step into the world of social media.

Maybe you think it’s fun to get involved with social media as a personal activity—a hobby of sorts—but why bother when it comes to your fleet?

The answer is far simpler and far more compelling than might be expected, especially given all the created-just-yesterday buzzwords flying around– not to mention the just plain annoying trendiness of this whole online scene that does turn many off at the get-go.

It’s also easy enough to dismiss the commercial value of leveraging such social media as Facebook, Twitter or Youtube as germane only to those businesses whose customers are consumers—known as B2C (business-to-consumer) firms in marketing parlance.

Sure, that makes sense. Why wouldn’t a company like Coca-Cola or AT&T or Procter & Gamble or Levi Strauss or Apple etc. etc. not want to use every means conceivable to reach out to that most fickle of beings, the capitalist consumer?

After all, weren’t the very same sort of companies the ones that were first to launch websites and engage in email marketing 20 or more years ago?

More to the point, why did these and every other giant of consumerism embrace all these things from websites to Facebook and Twitter?

Word of mouth, or as the marketing types like to abbreviate it: WOM. Since the first entrepreneurial caveman started selling handy-dandy ready-to-use flints, commercial enterprises of all types have relied on word of mouth to one degree or another to build business and to keep existing customers engaged with their brand.

That same need to reach new prospects and to keep in touch with old customers is just as crucial to a truck fleet as it is to other business-to-business (B2B) commercial operations. And those of course include all the suppliers out there who try to engage with your fleet operation via advertising in this magazine or direct mail or trade shows or, increasingly, via social media as well.



Social media is nothing more than electronic forms of that age-old tool of marketing: word of mouth.

The long and short of it all is that social media is just another tool with which to promote, grow and even protect your brand through various electronic versions of WOM interaction.

I asked rhetorically in this space in the February edition if trucking is about trucks. Better yet, I ask now is a truck fleet about trucking? To both queries my answer is “no.”

No, a truck fleet is not about its trucks or even that it hauls goods or performs services with its trucks. What a truck fleet is really all about is the people who get the job done day after day for customers, everyone from the driver right up to the CEO.

And that is what – or who in this case!—your customers want to know about you, Besides the bare facts of where you run, what you do and how much your charge, they want to feel “right” about hiring you and continuing to send you business, especially in what is today a buyer’s market for trucking services.

Unless all the customers you will ever really need happen to work just down the pike from your HQ, there is no less expensive and potentially more effective way to reach them—and stay with them– than through social media.

That is, if the social media outlets you choose to leverage are worked properly by you or a staffer– and that the leveraging is done both thoroughly and consistently.

Just as no truly professional organization would let its phones ring off the hook or leave its mail unopened, be extremely wary of launching a Facebook, Twitter, Youtube or other social media presence without keeping that presence up.

To be sure, if you build it they will come. But if they get there and find you gone – that is to say, inactive or just too quiet—they may think your whole operation is. Then they will cruise right on down the Internet without nary a backward glance. And you won’t know about it, if at all, until they are long gone.

Judging by the sights and sounds– chief among them being the positive words spoken by top executives of several major truck OEMs– here at the Mid-America Trucking Show in Louisville, trucking suppliers are straining at the bit for the economy to let them return to winning form.

Amidst all the news conferences and “booth visits,” fellow FleetOwner editor Wendy Leavitt and I had the chance to talk for a few– too few– minutes with Jim Hebe, sr. vp of North American sales operations for Navistar.



Navistar’s Jim Hebe

We started off by getting his outlook on Class 8 truck sales (U.S. and Canada). He said the year would end up “5% plus or minus higher than ‘09,” which he translated to mean a finish somewhere between 90,000 and 110,000 units.

But Hebe said for medium-duty sales he expects the “raw” figure (which excludes school buses, stripped-down chassis, and severe-service models) will leap from 47,000 units in ‘09 to 60,000 units this year.

“We’ll see a medium-duty uptick thanks largely to leasing companies coming back into the market after holding off buying new units for two years,” he noted.

Turning to Class 4/5, which Navistar so views as a growth market it has rolled out the new TerraStar truck to serve it, Hebe said what “we do with these [weight class] trucks has changed in this country. It [Class 4/5] is no longer all about buyers moving up into Class 4 or 5 from smaller trucks or downsizing from Class 6 because they needed more or less truck.



Class 4/5 TerraStar

“Rather,” he continued, “the distribution-type Class 6-7 customer has gone away. Now, goods that arrive at retail stores are more often delivered by the truckload. Even to restaurants it’s being done this way.”

On the other hand, he went on, “you can’t underestimate the growth of small businesses using trucks to carry out new services; everything from landscaping to plumbing. A Class 4 or 5 truck is what these buyers need.”

Turning to the now seemingly endless to-SCR-or-not debate, Hebe told us that as Navistar continues on with its current “advanced EGR” solution for 2010 emissions, the manufacturer does not rule out deploying other emission strategies or technologies.

“Down the road, it could be further optimization of EGR or some alternative technology or some combination of EGR and something else that we use [for compliance],” Hebe said. “But,” he added emphatically, “the solution won’t include using liquid DEF.”

It was still winter by the calendar last week in St. Louis, but on the show floor at the America’s Center near the famous Arch, a technological Spring was in full bloom, trucking style.

It was just the latest example of how it is no longer accurate to say “trucking is going green” because it already is green– and is getting greener nearly as fast as we can report it here and in print!

I mean it’s gotten to the point that truck fleet managers aren’t shocked (no pun intended) by the idea of an all-electric truck, but are more likely to be surprised that a given OEM doesn’t offer one yet.

Indeed, that not every truck maker yet offers such wondertrucks has thrown wide a door for essentially brand-new OEMs and assorted system suppliers to drive right into the heart of the light-duty P&D market and the medium/heavy “stationary” (read bucket trucks etc.) work truck market as well.

And, what’s more, these new guys at bat are being taken seriously right from their first swings by fleet operators intent on knocking some green balls out of the park, for one reason or another, right NOW.

Managers of such fleets had more green vehicle choices than ever– and not just electric, of course, but also hybrid, propane, natural gas etc.– to explore at The Work Truck Show, staged as always by the National Truck Equipmnet Assn. (NTEA).

The show in general was far bigger than ever to my eye (and feet!), consuming all the floor AND meetings space available at the America’s Center downtown, including the adjoining Edward Jones Dome, home field of the St. Louis Rams.



Year by year, truck by truck, The Work Truck Show is becoming a de facto Green Truck Show…

The greening of trucking was not only on display on the massive show floor, it was evident as well in the substantial growth in the Green Truck Summit educational program NTEA has been hosting ahead of The Work Truck Show for several years. This year’s edition offered a day and a half of speaker-led presentatiomns, panel discussions and breakout sessions on all things related to running green.



NTEA’s Green Truck Summit has helped spawn its new Green Truck Assn.

And not only did NTEA announce it has a new co-sponsor for the event– CALSTART– it also declared during the summit that it was launching a Green Truck Assn. Just further proof that the greening of trucking is well under way. And no doubt over time this growth will help trucking itself to grow in size– and in the nation’s estimation of what it means to this country.

I was thrilled to learn today via a news release emailed to me by the American Trucking Assns. (ATA) that the big trucking lobby is joining forces with U.S. Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-WA) and members of a targeted reform effort and will jointly hold a news conference tomorrow to press Congress “to improve transparency in the over-the-counter markets and establish aggregate position limits across all trading platforms.”

In other words, trucking will not be alone in the quest to curb the power that so-called speculators have over our commodity markets—including especially vehicle fuels.

The conference is set for 1 pm EST tomorrow (02/02/10) at the Dirksen Senate Office Building in Washington, DC. FleetOwner will of course report on it on the front page daily news section of our website.

Slated to speak on ATA’s behalf is Con-way Inc. vp Randy Mullett, who will call on lawmakers to improve transparency in over-the-counter markets and establish aggregate position limits across all trading platforms. ATA said he will also speak to the impact that excessive oil speculation has on trucking.

Along with Sen. Cantwell, other scheduled to speak include these representatives of the Derivatives Reform Alliance (DRA): Michael Masters, managing member, Masters Capital Management LLC; Roger Johnson, president, National Farmers Union; and Sean Cota, of Cota & Cota, Inc., of Bellows Falls, VT.



Greater transparency for the futures/derivatives markets is being sought by ATA and others

In its announcement today, ATA pointed out that under current law, some complex financial transactions and trading in energy and agricultural commodities take place with no transparency and without any federal oversight. “These include the credit-default swaps on mortgage-backed securities that fueled the housing bubble, as well as speculative trading that helped create massive bubbles in a range of consumer goods, from gasoline, heating oil and natural gas to wheat, cotton and other commodities,” said the trucking association.

ATA noted that DRA is composed of members of the Commodity Markets Oversight Coalition and Americans for Financial Reform. “These groups believe that inadequate federal oversight and excessive speculation contributed significantly to the financial crises and commodity bubbles of the previous decade, and believe that meaningful reform is essential in order to return stability, confidence and transparency to the futures/derivatives markets and the broader economy,” noted ATA.

I am no expert on speculation let alone up to snuff on derivatives, but I have a very good sense that the need for federal lawmakers and regulators to consider reforms for the futures/derivatives market is very real and can only benefit trucking in the long haul.

Twenty-three years ago, Michael J. Fox had a hit film on his hands with “The Secret of My Success,” a comical farce in which a wily young man rapidly fakes his way up the corporate ladder right into the executive suite.

As entertaining as the antics are of Fox’s character Brantley Foster—a recent college grad who arrives in New York City only to learn he has been laid off before he even starts working— we all know full well that only in the reel world of Hollywood would such a story come true.

But in the real world we all toil in, there is no secret to success.

And perhaps nowhere is that more true than in trucking.

Just to stay in the game in this industry—let alone to truly prosper—fleet owners and managers alike rely on nothing more magical than a willingness to work hard, to dedicate themselves to quality and professionalism, to think long, hard and smart, and maybe to have not a little faith in themselves, their colleagues, their employees and, yes, their suppliers.

And I think the sense of community that engenders that faith in others is at the crux of what makes trucking different from other industries.

Furthermore, I say that is also what makes trucking an attractive field in which uncounted fleet owners, managers, dispatchers, drivers, mechanics etc.– and that is not to mention all the supplier personnel out there–choose to toil in (or should I say, make a home in?) for decades at a time.

As it happens, recently I caught the last episode of a fascinating documentary series— “The Human Spark” on PBS hosted by the actor Alan Alda that tackled the question of what makes humans unique as a species.

The answer, according to that film, has much to do with how all we Homo Sapiens use language to manipulate symbols in our minds and use tools as extensions of our own bodies.

But the part that got me thinking about trucking was a discussion of “social cognition,” which the documentarians defined as “the unparalleled ability of humans to forge social bonds.”

In the episode, Alda wings across the pond to Oxford to talk to one of the founders of the social-cognition field, who argues that “we owe the very existence of our large brains to the need to keep track of the social whirl.”

Sound like trucking yet? But wait. There’s more. The researchers then reveal to Alda that probing the brain for the centers that make social cognition possible—“especially those that allow us to understand (and manipulate) the minds of others— shows that these regions are also related to brain centers that are “most active when we are simply doing nothing – day-dreaming, or ‘mentalizing’ – and this ability to build worlds and plans in our heads, especially involving the imagined thoughts and responses of others, perhaps come closest to being the elusive Human Spark.”

Hmm. Sounds to me like it could just as well be called the Trucking Spark.

Think about it. Is trucking about trucks? Is it about cargo? Is it about safety? Is it about rules? Yes, yes, yes and yes, of course. But if I pressed you to tell me what distinguishes one truck fleet– or a supplier company– from another, I bet your answer would indicate it’s really all about the people at each and every concern.

The people who deliver the service you expect. The people who deliver the quality you require. The people who come up with innovative solutions virtually routinely.

Then there’s the whole personal relationship aspect of trucking. Having never served in our Armed Forces, I hesitate to make this comparison, but it does seem to me that being “in trucking”—in whatever capacity—is at least a little like having been “in the service.”

Working as a journalist means I have to try to maintain some detachment from this industry I have been covering now for nearly 30 years. But, boy, (and thankfully) that is hard to do!

Doesn’t matter where I am– even overseas—or what I am doing or wearing or whether I am on or off duty, whenever someone with a trucking connection finds out I cover trucking, well that is good enough for them to start treating me like an old friend.

And it’s good enough for me, too. So keep on truckin.’ I got your back.

Just came across a provocative take on the pronouncement last month by the grand poobah of investors, Mr. Warren Buffett, who declared the U.S. recession is for all intents and purposes over.

Not so fast, argues Motley Fool contributor Rich Smith.

As Smith sees it, one just needs to review what’s going on with FedEx to get a clear, on-the-ground picture of the state of the U.S. economy. “FedEx reported its fiscal first-quarter earnings results… and I guess you could find some good news in there if you looked really hard. FedEx affirmed its Q2 guidance… Um, fuel costs are down. So that’s good news for anyone who burns gas — you, me, Delta Airlines,” Smith deadpanned. “But everywhere else, it’s bad news all ’round. Revenues dropped 20% from last year, FedEx lost 240 basis points worth of operating margin, and its operating profits got cut in half.”

What’s worse than those headlines, Smith added, are “the bits of dicta contained in FedEx’s report,” which he sampled thusly:

• FedEx Express incurred a bigger revenue drop than FedEx overall — 23% — while the unit’s operating profit margin fell more than the overall company .

• FedEx Services “took a smaller hit.”

• FedEx’s Freight unit endured the biggest decline of all as its revenues fell 27% and operating profit margin declined to 0.2%. “Operating profits all but evaporated,” he noted.

“FedEx is still hurting everywhere, but it’s feeling the most pain in shipments to major retailers,” Smith emphasized. “ Revenues in this segment are down significantly, which suggests business is hurting across the country.”

Whether or not Buffett– or anyone else– is technically right about the recession being “over,” Smith wrapped up by rightly pointing out that “there’s still a lot of pain out there. Even if the worst is over, it’s not gonna feel like it for at least another three months.”

I’d bet longer. How about you?

“The road to success is always under construction”

–Lily Tomlin

Despite the promise of federal stimulus bucks flowing into public construction projects– for everything from roads and bridges to schools– and the various faint indicators that the economy has begun to turn itself toward recovery, the view of better times ahead remains bleak for those working in the dirt.

According to Associated General Contractors of America’s (AGC) chief economist Ken Simonson, analysis of new construction employment figures released today by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) indicates that construction workers nationwide continue “to bear the brunt of the recession,” accounting for almost one-third of the jobs lost this August. Simonson said the new figures “underscore how the current economic climate is having a disproportionate impact” on construction.

“While most Americans are experiencing a recession, construction workers are being forced to cope with depression-like conditions,” stressed Simonson. “There’s nothing good in today’s report for the nation’s construction workers.”

He pointed out that construction employment nationwide declined by 65,000 this August. He added that construction workers accounted for 30% of the total non-farm job losses reported for the month– but the industry only accounts for 5% of the workforce.

The BLS figures also show that since the beginning of the recession, 1.4-million construction workers have lost their jobs. As a result, said Simonson, the unemployment rate among construction workers is now 16.5%, not seasonally adjusted, while the overall unemployment rate stands at 9.6% (9.7% if seasonally adjusted).



Construction firms– and truck fleets of all types– need to see many more of these signs going up!

Bearing in mind the promised impact of federal stimulus funds earmarked for public construction, it is depressing to note that the August numbers also “show that non-residential construction continues to account for a greater share of the industry’s job losses as compared to residential construction,” according to Simonson.

He said that the report shows nearly 43,000 non-residential construction workers lost their jobs, while 22,600 residential construction workers were laid off in August. The federal government, Simonson noted, said that non-residential construction has accounted for more job losses in 2009 than residential construction, whereas in 2008, residential construction saw the largest decline in employment.

“It is time for federal agencies to convert stimulus project announcements into actual contracts and construction activity,” said Stephen Sandherr, AGC’s CEO. He stated that few federal agencies besides the U.S. Dept. of Transportation have converted stimulus funds into new construction activity. “Congress also needs to look for ways to encourage the kind of sustained private economic growth that will generate significant new construction activity.”

To be sure, what hurts the constructon industry hurst trucking– and trucking’s suppliers, inlcuding everyone from truck and trailer OEMs down to component manufacturers to suppliers of consumables.

Perhaps the best action anyone in trucking can take right now to help get construction get rolling again is to pressure U.S. Represenatatves and Senators alike to look into what the holdups are in funding so-called “shovel-ready projects” that the stimulus dollars were expected to benefit first.